I'm Arjun. This is my digital garden.

Founders of early stage startups are often anxious about how much their company should be valued at. If your product is pre-MVP and pre-revenue, you can't quantify your cash flows. Consequently, you can't Discount your Cash Flows to a "Oh, that's a cool number!" I ask you four questions before you come to a number - How difficult is barrier to entry for you? Are you competing with Uber in mobility or Swiggy in last mile delivery? Stay low. How big is your competitive advantage? Can you continue to grow at 20% YOY for 15 years? That's 10 years to IPO and another 5 for economies of scale to kick in. Do you have patents? Do you have an intrinsic advantage over your competitors to keep your costs low? If yes, go high! Will it be too easy for your customers to switch to your competitors (Uber vs Ola; stay low), or too tough (Whatsapp; go high)? How matured is the market? Are you positioned for a stable share in a growing market (say gig economy, go high).

Discernment: What you go through when you take the plunge. This is where you realise that while perception is seeing results and observation is seeing the wins leading to them, discernment is wading your way through a mess of failures. For the proverbial fitness model, this is when you start working out to realise that your body is sore all the time. That you need to make massive sacrifices in your diet and lifestyle. And when you’ve got everything right, you still fail because the circumstances aren’t favourable. This is often where many founders start contemplating their choices. “That paycheck wasn’t encouraging, but at least it was regular. And perhaps I didn’t appreciate the transcontinental business class upgrades enough.” Few are able to wade through the discernment phase of entrepreneurship. There’s no set timeline. There’s no set amount of failures. The ones who do get through, get through quietly, exhausted and very, very lonely. Then, they indulge themselves in the

Observation: What you read, listen and talk to others about entrepreneurship. This is an echo chamber of optimism. This is where you understand that the fitness model probably hits the gym a few times a week. He probably also benches, squats and dead-lifts. You understand that there’s a process you’ll have to follow to get where you want to. Take the first left, then third right, turn at the roundabout and you’ll arrive at your destination. All you have to do is make a minimum viable product, hire a few folks, go about raising funds from investors (Ooh, that sounds exciting!). Every write up, podcast and book you read or listen to fills you up with so much optimism. “Sure, I can do that.”